Felix Partz

"GENERAL IDEA: Art, AIDS and the fin de siècle is a humorous, informative and ultimately poignant documentary about General Idea. Formed in 1969, they produced art that targeted and mimicked media, consumerism and celebrity, creating a revolutionary new spirit of art making. Interviews with AA Bronson, the sole survivor of the trio, lends personal relevancy to this story of art and sexual politics. GENERAL IDEA: Art, AIDS and the fin de siècle is a tale of love, fame, overwhelming loss and, ultimately, renewal." -AGO.net

Using ironic and iconic excerpts from television and film from the 1960s, such as The Joker character from Batman and part of the historic footage of artist Yves Klein's painting and performance from Mondo Cane, General Idea examine the relationship between the mass media and the artist.

Produced by De Appel, Amsterdam, while General Idea was in residence there, Test Tube was conceived as a program for television. Presented under the brand "The Color Bar Lounge," a cocktail bar in the mythical 1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion, the program is a hybrid of popular television formats […] and infomercial. […] Advertisements for the bar are placed throughout the program; a loaded word choice, full of double-entendres and innuendo, betrays the influence of both Dadaism and consumerism. This collapse of popular and high culture is central to General Idea's agenda, as Felix Partz observes: "You know, the mass media are like a vast pharmaceutical complex developing new cultural elixirs of an unprecedented intoxication…but art remains a curious and elitist drink. Despite its unique flavor and heady cultural properties, it has never effectively been exploited."

Hands Across The Border was a seven city slow scan collaboration. With participation from Paul Wong, Sharon Levett & Daryl Lacey, Video Inn, Vancouver;Randall Lyon & Gus Nelson, Televista Projects, Memphis; Sharon Grace, Video Free America, Berkeley Art Museum, U.C.; Peggy Cady, Bill Bartlett, Chas Leckie. Open Space, Victoria; Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal & Willoughby Sharp, General Idea, Toronto; Liza Bear & Robin Winters, Center for New Art Activities, NY.; et al. Slow-scan television equipment used a computerised memory to sample a picture from a television camera every few seconds, “freeze” it and send it down a telephone line as an audio signal. The machines could only be used between two points at a time. At the receiving end, the signal was decoded and slowly scanned out a still frame on a television monitor.

Produced for public television broadcast in Ontario, Pilot takes the form of a prime-time newsmagazine, with General Idea as the subject. As hosts, AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal describe their collective transformation from young strivers to "famous, glamorous artists," and the diversification of the General Idea media empire. Using a library of clips, they recount General Idea's public performances, films, and fashion designs (such as the "Venetian Blind Gown," modeled here by dancers, swimmers and snow skiers). They also discuss their print publication, FILE, and their decision to change the magazine's logo after Time-Life sued them for trademark infringement in June 1974. ("They didn't like our lifelike format," says Bronson.) A witty survey of the group's early work, Pilot is punctuated throughout by a voice-over manifesto on their continuing project, the Miss General Idea Pavilion of 1984.

This performance was held on June 19, 1974 at The Western Front, an artist-run centre in Vancouver. It was the first of General Idea’s five “audience rehearsals.” In these performances, the artists instructed their spectators when and how to gasp, laugh, and applaud, ensuring “appropriate mass reactions” for The 1984 Miss General Idea Pageant: a performance in the form of a beauty pageant, complete with contestants, judges, and a winner. Blocking was staged as a television broadcast, revealing the importance of the documentation, circulation, and preservation of General Idea’s work.

The Canadian artists’ group General Idea’s first and only film work, God is my Gigolo (1969), was shot in black and white on 16mm film without sound and was never completed. The work can be seen as a link between the underground cinema of the 1960s and 70s and the video art of today. It was shot in the neighborhood around the old house in Toronto where the General Idea group lived together and organized its first exhibitions, and on Ward’s Island, a small island in Toronto’s harbor. A drawing by Jorge Zontal of the set related in formal terms to Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe. The film's central narrative, outlined in a handwritten script by Zontal--the original was also featured in the exhibition along with film stills and a drawing of the set--involves a giant toy penis discarded by a vagrant and then circulated among various protagonists until it finally washes up on a beach on Toronto Island, where it is discovered by a group of natives.